Realisation is a bit of a shock!
The world is a beautiful rose garden, with thorns.
Once we start to understand the nature of Samsara and Nirvana (the two truths), we then begin to understand why we are here – to realise our true nature. Not spend our precious time entertaining ourselves, and being entertained by others. Entertainment is pointless!
This doesn’t mean we cannot have fun with everything we do. It’s just means that we don’t obsess about being entertained for most of our life. Even if we are clever at doing something, who are we trying to impress? Others who are also caught up in pointless activities?
We are even brought up (programmed) to engage in pastimes/hobbies/games. What a waste of time! Unfortunately most, if not all, of our acquaintances are locked in to pointless pursuits, such as checking their all-purpose-newest-newest phones every few minutes!
However, there are activities that can express a higher awareness. This involves waking up to the thorny rose garden – Samsara – and our true nature – Nirvana. Recognition is the joy of waking up to the true nature of both, and expressing these.
When we wake up, we play in a different way. Realisation, or waking up, is no big deal. You just wake up one day and realise, “I never have to be controlled by the ‘dream’ again!” The expectations of friend, family and neighbours still have to be dealt with kindly, but we need not get so involved.
Realisation is no big deal, but our conduct is. If there is no unconditional, empathetic love, there are only thorns.
The thorny shock.
Turning an entertaining toy games into killing machines…
drones!
They not only kill people.
They kill empathy.
Now that’s a bit of a shock!
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 
You used one of the most disturbing words in the English language – “pastimes”!! Since being a child, I’ve found that word abhorrent…why should we want to carry out an activity in order to pass the time?!
I find the way you distinguish between not choosing to spend our lives being entertained, while still enjoying everything to be very helpful here. The older I get, the less I feel any attraction to the artificially created world of “entertainment” out there, and the more I feel attraction to the simplest of daily activities. Trouble with this is that I’m finding I’m having a bit of trouble relating to friends and family who expect me to be full of opinions and quirky little stories about events in my life…they don’t want to hear about how I planted out my french bean plants this morning, or managed to dye that piece of silk that’s been giving me such trouble! They want to be entertained with “big” stories of exotic holidays and expensive meals – oh well…maybe they’ll just accept that I’m boring…
Daisy